The present study explored how students' sense of belonging and demographic background may predict what one finds helpful in replies to requests for help posted to an online college course discussion forum. We surveyed college students enrolled in an introductory statistics course on their sense of belonging to their course community, as well as how helpful they found 20 examples of replies to requests for help posted to a statistics course discussion forum. We found that students reporting lower belonging to their course community judged help-giving replies to be, on average, less helpful for their learning, when compared to those reporting higher belonging to their course community. Additionally, students reporting lower belonging to their course community had a greater likelihood of mentioning social support as a criterion for effective peer help-giving. These findings point to the importance of exploring how help-giving replies can be structured to attend to the learning needs of students who may feel alienated in classroom environments.

本研究探讨了学生的归属感和人口背景如何预测人们在回复发布到在线大学课程讨论论坛的帮助请求时认为有帮助的内容。我们调查了参加介绍性统计课程的大学生对他们课程社区的归属感，以及他们发现 20 个对张贴在统计课程讨论论坛上的帮助请求的回复示例有多大帮助。我们发现，与课程社区归属感较高的学生相比，报告归属感较低的学生认为给予帮助的回复对他们的学习帮助较小。此外，报告对课程社区的归属感较低的学生更有可能将社会支持作为有效同伴帮助的标准。这些发现指出了探索如何构建提供帮助的回复以满足在课堂环境中可能感到疏远的学生的学习需求的重要性。